


Down Among The Racks

by jackmarlowe



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Explicit Language, Gen, Jamie Goes South, M/M, Roadtrip, Series 3, caledonian mafia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackmarlowe/pseuds/jackmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie Macdonald, ex-Press Officer and general disgrace, inadvertently redeems himself when he rescues Nicola Murray's eldest daughter - and Nicola's career - from the scandal of a wild runaway weekend. A second chance at London politics, however, does not mean the same with Malcolm Tucker.</p><p>Set during Series 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Speaking of the Devil, He Ain't Been Seen In Years

In the months leading up to this particular evening, Jamie Macdonald had imagined his re-entry into the world of Westminster politics going one of two ways.

The first naturally involved the happy perversion of a Connery-era Bond action sequence - him swimming up the Thames in the cover of darkness, stripping off the wetsuit to reveal a white tailored knock-out number (not that he has owned a suit that fits him, ever), and going Apocalypse fucking Now on the back benches during the Queen's fucking Speech. The second involved slowly crucifying Malcolm Tucker with nails made of his own frozen bits on the lawn beside Churchill, calling it performance art, and charging more than the Tate fucking Modern might to watch Yoko Ono take a shit. If he pre-sold tickets to the Tories, he figured, he'd end the recession in a day and they'd all be fucking delighted to have him back.

These fantasies have gotten Jamie through a fair bit, namely choking on his own vomit, hysterical tears, and falling into the icy Clyde on a November night after a savage Old Firm match. It is unsurprising, then, that he nearly loses his faith a second time when he helps up a girl who's fallen through the door of a women's toilet in some stinking Northern Quarter Manchester club and sees it's Nicola Murray's fuck-up daughter. Jamie has only had three pints. This is few enough to realise, in a burst of awful clarity, that this is the horrible end of his miserable fucking post-political life.

'Jesus fuck-' And he drags her up, hauling her away from the swinging door, but she's lolling, limp adolescent tarted up in some fucking skimpy black dress with pale limbs flopping like a doll's, green eyelids gumming shut. Her thin arms are clammy beneath his steadying hands, and Jamie is suddenly aware of how fucking _young_ she is, and that he's getting some evils from the middle-aged hen party Jabba the Hutts oozing out the loo.

The emergency exit glows invitingly just beyond the cloakroom - Jamie sees it, shoves the awful bundle of lifeless girl down behind some coats, and and breaks several glasses shoving back through the blue-lit club for his anorak. He's here with Dan and some other shirt-and-tie cunt working for their sorry arsed McTwat of an MP, but they're off on the slavering pull - not Jamie's problem.

In ninety seconds' time, he's out the back with monged-out Wee Murray propped up against the reeking skip, patting her cheek gently and looking (if any police officers and/or _Spooks_ aficionados were to glance down this particular alley at 3 AM) like a dishevelled domestic terrorist.

'C'mon,' Jamie croons to this mess of blond hair, tipping her chin back with an encouraging two fingers as her head slumps against her narrow chest. He can't remember her name - saw it on the fucking six o'clock news five months ago, Droopy Tits Nicola Murray and Co go to some family fucking charity do, the new DoSac Mummy frowning like she'd sat on a halved lemon, and usually Jamie is surprisingly good with names but Malcolm happened to be in the background of two shots looking smug and this had obligated Jamie to put a Glenfiddich bottle through the telly. 'Wake up for me, darlin', tha's it, you cannae have had more than a dry fucking martini, right? Wee Southern bairn like you - come on, Jesus Christ-'

The girls' thin shoulders twitch fretfully - for a second Jamie stupidly wonders if she's cold, and then she sicks up like a dying cat all over the grey Nineties relic he likes to think is his 'going out' shirt. He swears and nearly falls over, but recovers enough to put a gentle hand on the back of her neck and guide her onto shaky hands and knees (he sometimes forgets he's a parent - not that he'd forget his daughters if you fucking Gilderoy Lockharted him, but that he's actually got the practical knowledge to look after fragile poorly weans). Nicola fucking Murray's tiny teenage daughter spits and coughs and leaks more yellowish bile than Jamie's ever seen aside from the time he punched Julius Nicholson in the stomach after a cocktail party, and Jamie Macdonald strokes her hair and tells her she's a sweet clever beautiful thing, puir girl, that's it.

He's almost feeling sentimental instead of out of his mind with horror when she shivers and wails quietly and starts to cry, blubbering and mumbling incoherently. Jamie seizes her by the shoulders and pulls her back up, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of his anorak and whishting her, but then her half-open blue-eyes focus on him a little and she shoves feebly his front.

'Ta'me...I...wan' t'go...in, fuck - _off_ -'

'Hush-' Katie, his brain reminds him, belatedly, how fucking middle class of Nicola and her poofy husband '-Katie, hey, hey, love. How'd you get into a place like that, posh kid like you? Does your mum know you're up North, huh?'

Tears are tracking her mascara down her face - she looks wild and mad and registers the mention of her mother enough to flinch, twisting in Jamie's arms. 'Fuck off!' she screams. 'Fuck - you, g'way-'

A car door slams somewhere close, echoing down the cold alley above the steady bump of bass and the screams of the fucking Jim Henson hen party, and Jamie has no choice but to turn this already-dodgy situation into a full-blown paedophiliac kidnapping. He covers Katie's mouth, scoops her up in one movement, stumbling only a little, and runs in something of a mounting panic towards the adjoining street.

Halfway to his motel, a tiny limp fist catches the corner of his jaw (Katie being half in and out of consciousness, but a fucking psycho when awake, apparently) and Jamie loses his fucking patience. He drops her feet, shakes her, screams some incoherent Glaswegian and possibly even calls her a cunt (for which he's immediately ashamed, as he's not sure if she's even over the age of fucking consent and Jamie has a Rule about that), and astonishes himself with the lie that he works for her fucking mother and she'd best fucking behave, young lady. What astonishes him even more is that this _works_  - not that the fight goes out of her entirely, but she sullenly falls back into his shoulder and that's that. 'Good lass,' Jamie soothes, humming, and as he picks her up again realises he's shaking worse than some addict acquaintances.

He manages to clamber up the motel fire escape with vommy-fucking-Teenage-Wasteland in his arms, and by some miracle they make it without anyone turning on the lights or calling a domestic violence hotline, though Jamie barks his shin climbing through the window and spends a good few minutes bleeding all over the fucking off-white carpet. Katie is a stinking mewling adolescent version of the Grudge Girl, her pointed face smeared with makeup and bile, so he does the sensible Motherwell thing, runs a warm bath low enough not to drown in, and plonks her in it fully clothed. She opens her eyes enough to glare and call him something she must've picked up from home, and for all of fifteen seconds Jamie feels faintly pleased.

He tosses his sicked-on anorak on the floor and it all comes flooding in like the Dutch boy's not only taken his finger out the dyke, kinky little fucker, but had a cheeky fist as well (this is not a convenient innuendo, but how, genuinely, Jamie has always interpreted this story). He catches the inside of his cheek between his teeth and bites down savagely, blood staining his torn trousers already forgotten - this is _bad_.

This is so bad it's practically been shat out by Osama bin Laden and posted via fucking anthrax letter to the Daily Mail.

Jamie glances at the phone that's tumbled out of his anorak pocket and has to throw himself face-first on the bed and savage a pillow to keep from punting the Blackberry and the inevitability it represents out the window. He realises belatedly that he's bleeding all over the sheets, which Katie might need later, rips them off the bed, and stomps in to check on Courtney Love as his heart tries to eat through his ribs. She's fallen asleep in the bath, looking like a drowned Dickensian waif or a zombie child prostitute with the black dress floating lazily around her thin frame and her mouth half-open: Jamie feels no better.

Of all scandals, it would be Nicola fucking Murray's daughter.

Nicola fucking sod-off cuntface udderfuck Murray. Malcolm Tucker's Frumpy MILF prodigy. Not that the news has ever called her this or the BBC-approved equivalent, but Jamie _knows_. In his gut. He wouldn't be surprised if they've fucked. In Number Two of his Political Second Coming Options, this notion does not make the Reborn Jamie feel a combination of violent nausea and gut-hammering grief and hyena-raging hate, but now it is just this that drops him to the bloodstained carpet and makes him reach for his Blackberry like it's the last drop of Blood of fucking Christ.

* * *

Sam is still the one to get the first call, several plastic bottles of room service wine later. Jamie is almost incoherent, but she hears the fear first, and realises it is this, rather than the alcohol, that makes him stumble and slur.

'Jamie - call Malcolm.' Hundreds of miles away, Sam curls up tighter beneath her duvet and tries to remember how to handle this particular Scottish psychopath at 5 AM. 'I don't care. It's Nicola's daughter, she's been missing a day and a night and they've called the police - I don't _care_ , Jamie. He's been up all night sorting the press and handling Nicola. He'll be relieved.'

She waits, and closes her eyes again.

'Nicola needs to know her daughter's safe. I'm not doing it for you, Jamie, he only sent me home an hour ago and you are being a fucking  _coward_.' A decisive click, and Jamie, on the other end, has to admit she'd grown a proper pair and no mistake even as he nearly shatters his phone throwing it against the wall.

And so it transpires that Jamie Macdonald comes back to politics as fate was always going to have it - drunk, weeping, lying on the bathroom floor with a passed-out teenager in his bed, and calling Malcolm Tucker, Cunt Who Must Not Be Named, after a sleepless night.


	2. Cooking Up the Books, A Respected Occupation

When he wakes up with his face pressed against cold tile and his left arm asleep beneath him, Jamie has five texts.

  1. _where u at mate_ (Dan)
  2. _Text me when you wake up. x_ (Sam)
  3. _W erd u go_ (Dan, several drinks later)
  4. _Jamie?????? wtf_ (Dan this morning, apparently still alive)
  5. _get on the fucking road_. (Malcolm)



This last, or rather seeing the name in his inbox, makes him sit bolt upright and crack his head against the towel rack. He howls and sees searing white for perhaps ten spotty seconds; then the pressure of his grip on the phone brings him back to it and he hears the stirring of sheets outside. Jamie glances down – still wearing his wrecked vomit-shirt and rolled-up trousers, and, probably, Nicola fucking Murray’s daughter is still next door. Unless she’s done a runner, in which case Jamie would logically do best to chuck himself out the window and resign himself to featuring in a fucking poor _Lolita_ re-write (not that Jamie has ever read _Lolita_ , or most books) in fifty years time once the journalists have gnawed his bones to dust.

He hauls himself to standing with some difficulty, head going like the Lord Mayor’s fucking Show, and peers around the doorframe. Katie Murray sits bolt upright in bed, sheets clutched in small fists, narrow face white and thin-lipped and looking like a firehosed chav. She looks even younger now after Jamie cleaning her up a bit – fifteen or sixteen, not much older than his eldest – and her swathed in his too-big pyjamas, a Celtic shirt and tracksuit bottoms.

They stare each other down. Jamie turns his hands palms-up, reassuring, and says exactly the wrong thing.

‘Right, I dunnae exactly how much you remember-’

She shudders and looks like she’s going to chuck up again – that on top of the bill Jamie’s already wracked up fucking haemorrhaging all over the carpet. The place looks like fucking CSI. He opens his mouth to be exasperated, but she stops him in his tracks, curling her knees up into her arms and saying quiet: ‘Please.’

Ninety nine fucking times out of a hundred Jamie considers this a satisfying response to wring out of most people. Most people are not a tiny vulnerable teenage girl wearing his fucking _Celtic shirt_ (this definitely increases Jamie’s sense of responsibility by several hundred percentages, though not consciously).

He instinctively does what he learned to do when Sam was new, the first few times he shouted and she got upset and Malcolm threatened to garrotte him slowly – he backs the fuck off to the wall. Here, he squats on his haunches and gives her his approximation of Glenn Cullen’s Quiet Serious face before remembering Glenn did always look like a bit of a paedophile.

‘You’re safe as houses, love, bless you, this isn’t Jeremy Kyle – I’m Jamie Macdonald. Used to – I work for your mum, at DoSac, yeah? And I’m really sorry about all this, I know this is looks like you’ve landed in the middle of _Hostel_ , but hear me out.’

Her hands twist on the duvet like she’s waiting for oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling and a sign to adopt the fucking brace position. To her credit, she waits.

Jamie rocks on his heels and hastily explains last night’s set of heroics down to his cut leg, tosses her the ID card in his wallet (which says Constituency of Manchester North West, but she’s of the fucking iPad generation and so blinks over it) from a safe distance, slides her over his phone and its contacts list of names of half-remembered people from her mother’s drunken-Christmas-party-cocktail-hostess introductions. Sam, bless her, sent him Nicola Murray’s contact details last night and called him a CUNT in repeat all-caps texts (shades of her boss, fucking creepy) until he saved it to his SIM card – Katie, hunched shoulders, sees the familiar number and gives a tiny nod without taking her eyes from the Blackberry screen.

‘My mum…knows, then?’

The squirming fucking plague omen of a rat king in Jamie’s gut relaxes somewhat. ‘Yep.’

Katie Murray finally looks at him – small vomited-upon Scotsman, wild hair, three-day-old stubble, earnest psycho blue eyes and back still pushed carefully against the wall. She swallows, and lets her raging hangover decide that he is too obvious to be a serial killer. At a stretch, he could be the host of a low-budget Scottish version of _Sun, Sex, and Suspicious Parents_. This thought, following on the heels of an image of her mother, makes her stomach heave, so she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

‘Have you got any cigarettes?’

Over the next hour, Katie proceeds to have the oddest encounter with a shady government employee she’s ever had – and there’ve been a few, including a twelve hour work experience back when Mum was still a nobody supervised by a facial-tattooed forty-year-old Council weekend volunteer who called her ‘hushpuppy’. Not only does Jamie give her a whole pack of Camels (an act of major fucking generosity which he immediately regrets) and not ask _why_ or _what she'd been thinking_ , but he insists she help him clean the bloodstains from the carpet _because you owe me a wee fucking favour after my selflessly fucking snatching you from the glory-hunting jaws of every Man Shitty wankstain in your prepubescent choice of pisshole nightclub, no offence, darling._ This done, he rings someone not Mum, slams the bathroom door and has a howling contest with a wolf on the other end of the line, and emerges red-eyed and head dripping from a ten-second stick in the shower to inform her that they’re heading down the M1 in ten minutes.

Katie has a small panic attack, then. Her chest closes up and she wheezes; in a second, Jamie is there, hand on her back, telling her he knows it feels fucking bad, but Nicola’ll always love her and he promises, he _promises_ not to say anything about the little bag of coke she had shoved down the front of her dress. Going home is never as bad as all that, in the end.

* * *

 

As promised, Malcolm goes over to Nicola’s in the morning. He opts to take his first cab in approximately eight hundred years – better a house call than a ministerial Batmobile stroking the neighbours into a state of speculative fucking ecstasy. The cabbie is an actual proper Cockney, which on any other day would have amused and/or infuriated Malcolm, but today he leans his head against the cold window and watches the city stone and glass blur.

Ordinarily Malcolm feels the affects of missing a night’s sleep like a bad taste in his mouth, or skipping a meal – annoying, and something to swallow through. Lately, though, the symptoms of being slowly fucked by the glassed end of insomnia have manifested as a deep aching in his joints. Like he’s _old_. Jesus. Today he feels like a fucking Alzheimer’s patient who’s been knocked down a flight of stairs by a disgruntled care home worker or a visiting bored sociopath.

A brief recollection of the conversation with Jamie (he sees his own breath hiss against the window, fogging the glass): it was not Jamie sobbing so hard he made himself sick or the subsequent _cunt_ -laced retching, but the familiar rhythm of his drunken breathing when he finally went quiet, that’d made Malcolm shudder.

He rubs the bridge of his nose bad-temperedly, consciously chooses clear functional rage, and spends the rest of the ride scrolling through a _Guardian_ editorial comparing Tom’s five most recent speeches to Barry Manilow songs. He even reads one aloud to the cabbie, who laughs his head off and still manages to sound like Michael fucking Caine.

Upon his arrival, James Murray, Head Gigolo, answers the door and informs him stiffly that it’s too early. Malcolm calls him a very fucking well-informed housebitch and sweeps past, Lucifer in an Armani coat.

Nicola is on the living room couch with a hot water bottle and a dressing gown over yesterday’s work clothes. She’s not wearing make-up, though Malcolm’s never seen much of a difference until maybe this morning, given that the dark bruises under her eyes rival his. He tells James to fuck off without looking around; Nicola, keeping her weary gaze on Malcolm, reminds him that he is genetically responsible for half of this mess even if it is political, and so the stiff-lipped fatheaded rugger cunt stays under the condition of making them all coffee.

When her useless human waste husband is in the kitchen, Malcolm pulls up a floral-pattern ottoman and seats himself directly in front of Nicola.

‘Tell me you used your very fucking expansive imagination and told the police something that doesn’t involve a boyfriend in Al Qaeda or the fucking Gingerbread People spiriting her away to Candyland. For me.’

Nicola gives him a dull exasperated look and folds her hands between her knees, nodding slightly. ‘I told them she’d lost her phone on a weekend away with friends.'

‘ _And?_ Fucking what, did they ask if she’d got stuck in the fucking wardrobe shagging Mr Fucking Tumnus whilst she was at it?’ Malcolm snarls, leaning in, his knuckles going white on the good upholstery. ‘ _Lost her phone_ – Jesus, she could’ve mugged a tramp and gotten away with an iPhone, this is the twenty-first fucking century-’

‘ _And_ I apologised for wasting their fucking time, Malcolm, and for the six voicemails you apparently left that very nice detective.’

Malcolm scoffs. ‘So besides the entirety of the Met knowing you’ve got the mothering instinct of a mentally challenged fucking lemming-’ She winces, and he shifts back slightly, watching her face sharp, ‘-they bought that, did they?’

‘Yes. No _leaks_.’ She chooses the political word like it’s phlegm rolling off the back of her tongue, grimacing as she turns her head after James’ swearing in the kitchen over the instant coffee. Malcolm notes the distracted twitch of her unwashed hair, realises she’s still got the appalling fucking sense to be embarrassed by this, her suburban house, her buffoon of a husband, the non-fuck-up kids in bed asleep. Maybe she’s wasted on DoSac after all.

His Blackberry goes – he checks, and it’s Sam telling him Jamie’s on his way down from Manchester. Her text tone suggests she is irritated about being the go-between; Malcolm sends her a smilie face in response, something he has sworn never to do. When he looks up, Nicola is watching him with hungry eyes.

‘Is-’

‘They'll be here in a few hours. He's a fast driver.’

Nicola relaxes a little, shifting to sit cross-legged on the couch; she glances once more at his Blackberry. ‘Malcolm,’ she says, quiet and oddly gentle, using a fucking alarming tone Robyn usually reserves for asking him if he’s ill (she never learns – never, like a broken fucking record), ‘I know – I know about you and Jamie, Ollie told me at the New Years party, and I wanted to say-’

James Fucking Murray chooses this precise moment to walk through the door with a pot of coffee and a couple of biscuits. Malcolm enjoys a brief fantasy of a Sherman tank driving through the side of the house and tire-treading him into the truly awful Persian fucking rug as individual cells. ‘Milk and sugar?’ he inquires, like he's suddenly remembered Malcolm's been up all night locating their prodigal fucking creature and maybe deserves this bit of gratitude.

‘You know, it _is_ too fucking early,’ Malcolm says, turning his back on Nicola, and disarms James Murray by smiling as he takes the proffered cup.

* * *

 

Katie puts up with the entirety of Disc 1 of Al Jolson’s Greatest Hits all the way to Nottingham. As far as Jamie’s concerned, this makes her the Murray family’s only hope for beating the evolutionary odds.

Cleaned up and gunning the little Vauxhall that Sam’s rented – the first car he’s driven in over a year – he feels better about the whole thing. It’s turning out to be a sunny day, he’s not answered any of his texts, they’ve stopped for a Burger King (Jamie passing for a dishevelled kidnapper, Katie looking like his brainwashed underage novice in his Celtic shirt and a rolled-up pair of his shorts with her hair pulled back so she looks more like twelve than sixteen), and Malcolm hasn’t texted him again. Katie is good company – after an hour and a half of the Governor, he lets her choose an XM station and is pleased in a parental sort of way to discover she knows all the words to ‘Lust for Life’.

Katie gets pensive and adolescent after a while:

‘My mum won’t even fucking _do_ anything. She’s too much of a coward. She probably won’t’ve even told Dad I’m gone. I left her a note on the bed – I said I’d be back on Monday, and she couldn’t fucking stop me. I’d be safe with David. She thinks David’s a tramp just because he’s in _trade school_.’

‘She sounds like a charming auld cunt.’

Katie giggles and tilts her head from the passenger seat. ‘I thought she was your boss?’

‘Oh, aye. Don’t get me fired, eh?’

‘I won’t,’ she says, confidently. ‘You’re cool.’

Eight miles out of central London, with the tomtom saying twenty-five minutes to the Murray residence, Jamie’s phone rings and Katie reads Malcolm’s name off the screen to him. He nearly crashes the car ripping the Blackberry from her hand and pulling over – fucking _pulling over_ , in this age where people happily kill themselves texting and driving because they’re competent multi-tasking fucks – to get out.

The blowback of traffic screams in Jamie’s ear and whips his shirt; he can barely hear, crouched over beside the car. Katie peers inquisitively through the window and he doesn’t see her, or the steel motorway barrier two feet in front of him, or the row of slummy houses just beyond.

‘What?’

‘Where the fuck are you?’

He screams incoherently for a good sixty seconds about being so fucking close he can practically piss and hit the reeking aura of London humanity, all of which he _hates_ -

‘Fine,’ Malcolm cuts in, and hangs up.

Some time ago, Jamie prided himself on being the only person physically capable of reducing Malcolm Tucker to a one-word response. Now, he breaks two toes kicking a steel barrier on the side of the M1 and wishes for nuclear holocaust.

Things happen very quickly once they get into the city. The Murrays' reunion is tearful, and even Katie gets weepy and apologises and puts the whole fucking family together again. The New Dream is accomplished, i.e. Nicola turns on her benevolent-cow Meryl Streep face and tells Jamie very earnestly that he's got a job in Westminster if he wants it. Jamie is so miserable by this point, as the sun is setting and he realises he hasn't got a place to stay, he nearly says no.

Nearly. But there's life in him yet, and there are things to do.


	3. Swimming in the River That Floods the Neighbourhood

‘He’s only gonna bring you grief, Nicola, believe you fucking me.’

‘You know, I’ve made exactly zero hiring decisions since coming to this office, and given the average disaster return rate, I’m beginning to think I can only improve-’

‘Hey hey hey, seriously, Nicola. I’m not jerking your fucking chain, a’right? This is a good cop day. He – Jamie did the whole ritual suicide thing for a reason, that being he's a psycho fucking kamikaze cunt. Ask Terri or Glenn, they were there, wetting themselves - not that that's fucking unusual-’

‘I’m sure _you_ had plenty of reasons for getting rid of him, Malcolm, but frankly I’m not interested in your-’

‘Oh - oh, this is about _me_ , then? Are you fucking having a go at me, ha? Let’s no’ mess about, alright? Let’s not pretend you’re anything more than Mrs. Fucking Potts chucking around the palace serving up the fucking tea and wanked-on biscuits in between wiping your considerable arse all over the immigration figures. Let’s not do you the injustice, because you’re humiliating yourself enough as it is. _Don’t_ -’

‘-The Treasury wanted him, Malcolm. They rang this morning. Would you prefer he go _there?_ ’

Dead silence, then a furious, fumbling clack that may’ve been one of the two phones in this exchange slamming against something unnecessarily solid. It occurs to Nicola, in the back of her ministry car crawling over Westminster Bridge, that Malcolm is spinning scared, though possibly this is just wishful thinking. 

* * *

Jamie does try – he really does – to keep it together over the first week of his shiny defibrillated career.

Nicola Murray's offer of a job, predictably, is confined to her staff at DoSAC (Frankie, whose couch he’s living on now Malcolm’s kicked him off Sam’s, calls it BallSAC and laughs hysterically every time). Jamie, whose new desk is a mere fifty paces from Terri Coverley's, has the daily horror of feeling like a civil servant. However, Nicola soon discovers he’s the best thing for press relations since the inventions of radio and crowbars, starting with the evisceration of the one tabloid journalist who’d gotten something about a Murray daughter disappearing. Almost immediately, Ollie Reeder sees the inside of far fewer strategy meetings.

It’s inglorious and Nicola is fucking incompetent, but London makes Jamie buzz like he’s coming alive again and for hours at a time he enjoys the feeling.

He finds himself drinking a lot. (‘A lot’ here meaning getting properly pissed, by Jamie’s warped standards, on week nights). Frankie also drinks a lot, and the local pub (a notorious Caledonian Mafia after-work drop-in; Jamie’s unsure which came first, Frankie’s little flat or these meets, chicken or the egg) shows the SPL, i.e. the stars are precisely aligned. But he calls Sam like clockwork when he tips past a certain point, too often; it’s not fair, is always his first nauseated waking thought the next day, it’s deeply fucking wrong of him, but calling Sam is better than the alternative. She’s a safe bet, the closest thing he has to a Port in the Storm That is the London Mess.

After the fourth call on Thursday evening, she threatens to tell Malcolm that Jamie’s been waking her up at stupid fucking hours and upsetting her, and he makes a solemn vow not to do it again.

The first time he actually sees the Head Cunt in question is Saturday evening, down Frankie’s pub watching the Celtic match.

This is highly irregular. Malcolm, unlike any remotely fucking healthy human, has for as long as Jamie’s known him preferred to watch the football at home like an ASBO freeze-dried crouching-burial mummy, or an American. He’d even _record_ it sometimes, which in Jamie’s books is roughly equivalent to self-castration. Malcolm descends to the pub about as reluctantly as Humphrey Bogart coming off the bridge of the fucking _Caine_ , unless it’s an Old Firm match or the Champion’s League Final.

But he’s here, nevertheless – still dressed for work, lean and sharp and greyer-haired, looking vaguely shifty perched on a stool with fingertips circling a pint and a few Mafia types clustered around, like his body doesn’t know what to do when it’s not full-out sprinting. His eyes are locked on the screen, though – Malcolm, for his fucking appalling viewing habits, still bleeds green and white and Jamie knows it better than anyone – so he doesn’t see the door swing open and the prodigal fucking son blow in.

Frankie sits down. General distracted _wahey_ ing, as it’s only twenty minutes in and Vennegoor’s arguing with the ref. Jamie lingers over choosing a drink and finally heads to the corner to pull up a stool between Frankie and Robbie.

Malcolm flicks a glance sideways and pauses, one hand slipping off the tabletop. Jamie meets his eyes for a second and slaps Robbie on the back. ‘Alright, twat? Long time no see.’

A big hello – all six of Number 10 lads actually look from the match for about ninety seconds for cheerful, incredulous hugs. No one asks him what he’s been up to; a few glance to Malcolm like they’re looking for a cue, and then a big cross sets up Miller for a header and a few chairs get knocked over in the resulting pandemonium and it’s like Jamie’s never been away.

At halftime, everyone clears out like they haven’t had a cigarette since Sir Walter Raleigh snuffed it. Malcolm, who’s only chimed in once with something vague about the opposing back four that got lots of enthusiastic slave-nodding, stays where he is; Jamie risks another glance over, sees the look on his face, and pretends to be very casual in staying too.

With just a stool between them, they are unbearably close. They are the closest they’ve been in eight months. Jamie can _still_ – Jesus, just looking sideways through his lashes he’s anticipating fucking precisely how he leans back in the chair, pushes three fingers between collar and neck, rubs fretfully, huffs a breath, and it’s _not supposed to be like this_ -

See, he’s imagined their inevitable reunion in – well, an uncountable number of deeply unrealistic and/or Tarantino-esque ways. Recently, this has distilled to the purest essence of psychokiller visualisation, i.e. fear-induced twofold possibility. It will either be 1) like standing next to Chernobyl’s fucking Elephant’s Foot with one of them frying under all that radioactive hate until white oblivion sets in, or 2) a more rather private and deeply unrealistic scene in which Malcolm breaks down and chokes up enough yellow OAP snot to construct a small, humble, representative sculpture of the overwhelming fucking tidal wave of grief and rage that has cracked Jamie’s skull open worse and more frequently than his sympathetic Belfast great-uncle’s potcheen. Then - maybe - they fuck.

‘We should get a few things clear,’ Malcolm says, in the quiet, hoarse voice that says he’s tired (this twists at Jamie’s stupid fucking heartstrings, makes him instantly sick and furious).

He clears his throat and turns his chair squarely to face the beast, insides churning. ‘I haven’t got a fucking thing to say to you, Malc.’

Malcolm hisses faint, distracted exasperation. He still won’t look at Jamie; he keeps his eyes narrowed and unspecific, arms folded, hunched into himself, vaguely wraith-like. ‘I’m not interested in your Sarah McLaughlin fucking tribute act.’

‘Been there fucking done that. Why’re you down here?’

A faint scoff. ‘I could ask you the fucking same.’

‘Oh, well – something about saving the Great White Mummy Hope’s daughter and political career from a horde of Mancunian paedophiles. Thank you, Jamie.’

Malcolm shifts slow in his chair and finally, finally meets Jamie’s gaze, crossing his legs and leaning back. ‘I’d give you a blowjob,’ he says, lightly, ‘but under the circumstances…’

Jamie flinches. Malcolm sneers, triumphant – it’s been awkward up to this point.

‘Why’d you bother, incidentally? That wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt at a glorious political multi-orgasmic rejuvenating _fuck_ , was it? I thought I felt a breeze down there-’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Nicola – fucking – Murray.’ Malcolm’s angry-laugh is tight and small, like he’s already got Jamie’s fist shoved down his throat; he tips back the rest of his pint. Jamie forces himself to take another gulp of his cider and tries to crush a napkin discreetly. His heart is racing, and Malcolm is still silky-quiet, using that particular razor-cold purr Jamie could never quite put on without sounding like a manic Hannibal Lector. ‘You’ve got a lot goin’ on there, haven’t you? A real fucking political Old Faithful. You could power a small nuclear reactor with the steam rising from her colossal shits. Alright,’ he concedes, waving a hand as Jamie slams his glass down and prepares to launch into full _Kill Bill_. ‘I’m not going to do this here – I want to talk business.’

‘You’ve gone full fucking nutter.’

‘I have fucking _survived_ ,’ Malcolm snarls, flaring up like a starved pale-face vampire bat, chin thrust forward so Jamie gets the disorienting affects of his sharp exhale. ‘And you haven’t. You’re only back on the fringe of all the Merry fucking Wolves because I have _allowed_ it as a gesture to the wee new Secretary of State who’s decided to adopt a slavering mongrel charity case. Don’t you dare fucking kid yourself.’

‘If I hadn’t-’

‘Jesus Christ, do you really think Nicola or anything she’s shoved out of her vagina rank in my Top Ten Most Wanked-To?’

No, Jamie has to admit after a long DoSAC week, he doubts that very much. Nor, he’s beginning to worry (despite his vengeance-fuelled Eternal Flame of self-delusion, kept burning now since the day he cleared his things out of Malcolm’s house), is he. And, as tremblingly enraged and robbed of words as Jamie is, as much as he wants very badly to tip Malcolm out of his chair and kick his scrawny smug frame into splintered ice chips in order to make some dear violent sense of All This, he very suddenly can’t _stand_ that notion.

‘Which brings me to business,’ Malcolm says silkily, and at this precise dip into a frankly self-indulgent Godfather impression the Mafia pile back with fresh pints howling for Kilmarnock blood.

After the match (a Celtic win; Frankie breaks two glasses; even Malcolm, briefly distracted, consents to be slapped on the back by the instantly penitent Eamonn), Jamie steals the key out of Frankie’s coat, shoulders on his anorak, swallows any lingering incongruous savage joy, and takes his holier-than-thou sober leave. He’s not twenty steps out the front door into the deserted street before Malcolm’s far-too-fucking-familiar gait snaps behind him and Jesus, Malcolm calls him by _name_.

He turns reluctantly, helplessly - _Jamie_. Malcolm isn’t coming after him, just standing there like a thin, pale shadow in his black overcoat, phone already in hand, prepared to turn and go the other way.

‘Keep an eye on Nicola for me.’

Jamie pulls a furious, incredulous face from across the street. ‘I’m no’ telling Herr fucking Himmler on her. The times they have fucking changed.'

‘Just do as you’re fucking told – I’ll explain later.’ Malcolm turns on his heel, hesitates, and adds his own unfortunate one-liner: ‘This bit’s just politics.’

‘Is it _fuck_ ,’ Jamie snarls, with an unconsciously passable Tucker sneer, and stalks off in the direction of the bottle of expensive whiskey Frankie’s been saving for a special occasion.

* * *

Sam’s understanding of recent events in Jamie Macdonald’s political career is, like the rest of her memory, better than most and dotted with highly classified information. This is not why Malcolm hired her in the first place, but it is a contributing factor to why he maintains her with the out-of-character zeal of a slightly overbearing parent.

She has Jamie on the brain at eleven o’clock at night, because he hasn’t called and she’s still awake reading on her couch despite the coffee machine to be fixed tomorrow before Malcolm’s arrival. She supposes she should be grateful – one of the few frightening incursions in her otherwise secure childhood was an estranged alcoholic great-uncle who rang the house at odd hours of the night, so violently and often that she and her sisters learned to flinch when the phone went. Jamie, Sam knows, calls out of idiot child-minded loneliness rather than malice. She herself is three weeks out of a yearlong relationship (much to Malcolm’s delight; he’d left her a box of nice Covent Garden chocolates and given her the afternoon office as a kind of congratulations), and still feels very little at all. She almost envies Jamie.

But she doesn’t, because he’s a rabid, often frantic Scottish wolf of a houseguest who did indeed overstay his fucking welcome and never put the toilet seat down and vomited all over her Special Edition _Friends_ boxset, and also because Sam knows the circumstances that have tossed him to the winds and back with London the eye of the vortex.

Sam knows, like most people who have been at Number 10 few years and keep their ears to the rumour mill – this rumour once carried with it, of course, the elevated risk of said ears being hacked off, but Sam is Immune – that Malcolm Tucker and Jamie Macdonald came into work together or exactly twenty minutes apart almost every day before Jamie’s abrupt departure. Unlike any other person who’s been at Number 10 a few years, Sam sits two feet from Malcolm’s office door, and has gamely manned this infinitely lonely sentry post through the worst of times.

These began in earnest one unspecified afternoon in November, when Jamie slammed into Malcolm’s office like a wild-eyed derailed locomotive without knocking.

This in itself was hardly out of the ordinary. However, Sam then heard Malcolm’s urgent voice imploring Jamie, for the first time ever, to _be quiet,_ stupid cunt, the walls have fucking ears, and the lock clicking. This degree of secrecy did not suit Malcolm in his own environment; for all his playing close to the chest, he liked to think of his office/lair as his own Thames House, and Sam his willing, blissfully deaf accomplice (this last was true, to a point). Sam spent the next fifteen minutes staring at Malcolm’s colour-coded agenda, which looked, as it always did, illustrated and vomited-upon by a toddler born to hippie parents, and trying valiantly not to hear what sounded dangerously like a nuclear meltdown just over her shoulder. After a minute or so, Jamie did actually go quiet – a sure indicator of Awful Things, even if you didn’t possess Sam’s insight – though he ran a muttering, jolting monologue, and sounded like he was pacing, and Malcolm was being terrifyingly fucking gentle and calling him by his name, _Jamie, Jamie,_ like it wasn’t going through. And then Jamie just left, smashing Sam’s desk with his hip on his way out the door, and Malcolm, for the first time in Sam’s memory, cancelled his last appointment of the day and went home a full hour early.

 _Trouble on the home front_ – that was always Sam’s mum’s phrase for it, so horribly middle-class it barely applied. She’d always assumed (not that Sam speculated about these things in any detail) that Jamie and Malcolm’s fights did the most damage to anything resembling a home front since the Blitz. Sam did history at university, though, and began to dislike the metaphor as the oncoming New Year and rumours of a coup dragged them all in. Decades of healing and Clement Attlee had been needed to recover from the Blitz, and neither appeared to be immediately on hand.

A flurry of sound-bytes: Malcolm, startled when Sam wished him a happy Christmas on the day itself, like he’d forgotten. The day after Boxing Day, Jamie throwing a lamp at Malcolm’s head and revealing a few unmentionables entirely unrelated to politics with the office door still open. The worst came down two days after the PM’s resignation, when Malcolm rang her very late at night and asked, deathly quiet and approaching the edge of something like pleading, if she’d heard from Jamie. There’d been a breath in the conversation, Sam remembers with excruciating clarity, in which they’d realised simultaneously that Jamie wasn’t coming back.

Her Blackberry goes on the coffee table, suddenly, and she flinches out of profound embarrassment to her empty flat because it’s an e-mail, no subject, from Malcolm.

_Bit of a late night think here, re: JN’s message from yesterday. Beginning to think Fucking Baldy’s idea is an exceptional one (I assume you’ll delete/utterly obliterate this from the record, that I might go to my grave content and safe in the knowledge that he never hears this from me). I definitely want Nicola at Birmingham immigration thing. She’s already on shaky ground, so if she fucks up we’ll just recycle and plant a tree with her. That’s what he wants._

_Ring Jamie in the morning and put this in his ear? Ollie’s in the doghouse with the Head Bitch. Cheers pet. M x_

Sam replies and puts the phone back. Her book has toppled over her knees; she retrieves it and tries to settle back against the cushions.

Ten minutes later, Jamie rings.


	4. First Comes Public Safety, Second Comes the Nation

Clacking on the seven fifteen to Birmingham, possibly her least favourite English shithole, it begins to occur to Nicola Murray that she is being played for a fool.

By this time, of course, it’s too late to do anything about it because she’s halfway up the arse of the Midlands and has already had two cups of coffee.

This thought emerges, though, because Nicola’s pretty fucking certain that the Second Annual Birmingham Diversity Conference is a bunch of refugees and second-generation immigrants eating three-day-old Greggs sandwiches in a church basement and as such she is being sent on the embarrassing political equivalent of a coffee run. She also suspects – and she’s vaguely right – that this is an elaborate, obscure, fucking absurd scheme of Malcolm’s to fuck her and her new press officer simultaneously. This is a kind of _fucking arbitrary_ revenge, Nicola thinks, for Almost-Katiegate, and a Victor Hugo-esque instalment in the awful bloody epic that, she’s pieced together from some truly horrifying trip-ups on the grapevine, makes _Macbeth_ looks like a Scottish romcom.

Jamie is never still on the moving train – he sits across from Nicola restlessly for a few minutes at a time, chomping nicotine gum, baby-blue eyes darting in his head, leaping up to pace on the phone, often roaming into the unseen realms of other carriages. His spiky, empathetic black capitals fill the typed pages scattered across their shared plastic table (‘NO NO NO FUCKING NO’, ‘RACIST ANGELA LANSBURY’, ‘IF THIS -> BIBLICAL REFERENCE IS INTENTIONAL YOU’RE GOING TO HELL’). Glancing down at them now, Nicola is a little irritated, given the idiocy of this trip, to realise that this already feels oddly reassuring. Jamie is terrifyingly good at the job. He has also, apparently, decided to show his gratitude by single-handedly attempting to make her the next Prime Minister of Great Britain. It’s a bit like having a wolf on a leash who behaves like a Labrador until someone tries to pet it: it’s a massive liability, but it’s a lovely upgrade from Ollie or Glenn, who on good days range from lapdog to cocker spaniel.

It is painfully easy for Nicola to identify Malcolm’s legacy in Jamie. His fanatical, shiv-edged professionalism, most obviously, is a learned thing in the way his rage and boundless energy are not. In the past week, she’s heard him use _Blue Velvet_ as a metaphor for the inside of Geoff Holhurst’s tiny skull and demonstrate a reasonable understanding of E.P. Thompson, neither of which, she has reason to suspect, are formative aspects of Glaswegian state education and/or criminal reform programmes.

Jamie even possesses a few eerie Tucker physical habits, leftovers that he hasn’t managed or wanted to eradicate from his own body – the little incredulous open-mouthed-headshake, the moody, irritated sinking back into chairs, how he drags out _Jeeesus_ in a giddy psychotic rage. He has exactly none of Malcolm’s exhaustion. Nicola, however, has noticed – and she does try not to despite her own morbid curiosity – how he retreats vaguely inwards when Malcolm comes over for his near-daily DoSAC rampage, and guesses that’s courtesy-Malcolm-Fucking-Tucker too.

She’s sympathetic up to a point, but, if she’s privately honest, also profoundly irritated, as the second Hero Jamie came through the door after her teenage runaway she’d had an incredible flash-vision of him as a kind of Filthy Scottish Cerberus crouched before the DoSAC gates, a precious commodity – the only mythical beast capable of savaging Malcolm in his own language. Nicola is only a few months into the job, but this is already a High Priority Task of which she’s frustratingly incapable. At least she’s got the balls to admit it, she thinks, reproachful, and peers down the swaying aisle for her Glaswegian Attack Dog, who through the glass door is miming garrotting someone with his Blackberry pinned between ear and shoulder.

Nicola finishes the rest of her Diet Coke and tries to make sense of the phrase ‘micro-urban diversification’. Jamie disappears from her peripheral vision, and returns ninety seconds later dragging Ollie, refreshments-trolley Quavers clutched helplessly in each hand, by his tie. A few people shoot Nicola glances across the aisle normally reserved for bad parents.

‘Sorry, Nicola, Ron Weasley here was off buying Chocolate Frogs and having a wank in the toilet.’

‘Ollie, for fuck’s sake-’

‘I wasn’t _having a_ -’

Jamie shoves the top of his head and forcibly sits him down next to Nicola, then slides back into his own seat, interrogation-style. He smiles across like a benevolent child prodigy. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Well-’ She glances down at the mess: micro-urbanisation or diversity or dreaded half-mentions of immigration figures, like a scary Pick-‘N’-Mix ‘-yeah, I mean, not great, given that I don’t know who my audience will be, or how many people will be there, or if I’m here in a “My department’s a fuck-up” sense or “Your governmental inflatable doll endorses this” sense.’

‘Oh good, you could combine the two,’ Ollie snorts, trying out a sneering laugh. ‘Make a joke about self-flagellating sex toys, that’ll liven up the Brummy crowd…’

Jamie’s brow furrows. ‘If you speak again,’ he suggests, leaning across the plastic table, ‘I will open your stomach, weave both your intestines into tennis nets, and keep you alive on an intravenous drip for the duration of your favourite fucking white-shorts-clad poof’s decider of a Wimbledon match, which he will _lose_ because tennis _isn’t a real fucking sport_.’

‘Jokes’ll be all right, won’t they?’ Nicola prods, anxious. ‘It’s not like I’ve even been formally invited – that makes it an informal speech, doesn’t it? I should use some jokes.’

‘Not been formally invited?’ Ollie inquires sharply.

‘The powers-that-be,’ Jamie explains, ‘thought it’d be a very nice thing to show some initiative and express an interest by registering with the rest of the pack. It’s small, it’s outside fucking London, and it’ll make our Nicola-’ He beams at her again, unsettlingly loyal ‘-look like a proper people’s champion even if DoSAC _is_ leakier than a care-home gran.’

‘The powers-that-be – so, what, Malcolm?’

Nicola glances sideways at Ollie. He’s actually giving it a little deliberate push, testing the waters – she contains the urge to belt the little shit-stirrer over the head with one of the horrible brown shoes she’s kicked off under the table. Jamie wrinkles his nose and shrugs, folding his arms over his chest.

‘Probably Julius Nicholson. Baldy Fuck gets his nuts off playing PR sometimes.’

‘Is it weird for you, Jamie, having dropped so low on the food chain that you have to speculate about these things?’

Jamie blinks, incredulous. ‘Not as weird as the sensation of a red-hot poker entering your anus. That’s pretty fucking weird.’

‘If you two don’t stop sniping and write me some fucking jokes,’ Nicola says under her breath, catching one of the disapproving Midlands Mum of the Years’ eyes and smiling wide and with teeth, ‘I’ll end up saying something racist and then where will we be?’

* * *

‘Nicola Murray’s said something racist at the Birmingham immigration conference.’

Sam’s head vanishes behind the door from whence it peeked. Malcolm drops his feet from the desk with a bang and knocks his ham and brie sandwich to the floor lunging for the remote.

The BBC’s got it, with a big fucking unfortunate photo of Nicola halfway through a mouthful of curry hovering beside the newscaster’s smug fat face. Malcolm makes a mental note to have a shipment of dissection-standard foetal pigs mis-delievered to the latter’s house and leans, mouth half-open, into the broadcast.

_‘…during which time Mrs. Murray referred to the predominantly ethnic-Pakistani audience as ‘you people’ on three different occasions. Mr. Muhammad Hafeez, coordinator of the Birmingham Centre for Diversity, registered his surprise and dismay at the Secretary of State’s “appalling lack of sensitivity and education regarding the very issues-”’_

He’s ringing Jamie so fast he nearly asks for help out of sheer bloody habit rather than verbally castrating him. Jamie picks up snarling like he’s raring for a fight, though, which instantly sorts out Malcolm’s head:

‘She fucking deviated from the script, okay, she thought it was a casual conversation so she decided to fucking _improvise_ -’

‘Can you not,’ Malcolm roars, ‘do _anything fucking right_.’

‘This is _no’ my fucking_ _fault_ , you stupid self-righteous cock, slow the fuck down! I wrote her a fucking exceptional-’

‘-letter of resignation, did you? Along with your own, yeah? Jesus Christ, one fucking week in politics and you’re halfway up the U-bend again – that’s got to be a fucking record. Right up there with John Major’s second mistress and Peter Mannion’s aborted third lovechild, you incompetent excuse for a dead sack of fucking foetus-fluids-’ Malcolm realises that he’s spinning into a rant, suddenly, and out of breath – that these are signs of weakness, with Jamie, who can tell even when he’s raging himself – and clenches his teeth tight as Jamie bawls over him.

‘-and sending Nicola to fucking Immigration Nuremberg under the impression she was going for tea and fucking biscuits. This was _Julius Fucking Nicholson_ , wasn’t it.’

Oh, he is still a lovesick _cunt._

Malcolm, gripping the remote compulsively, tries to breathe in his thoughts as a neat, terrible, collected set of shrapnel and hesitates a moment too long.

‘Wasn’t it,’ sneers Jamie’s voice, terrible and hurt.

‘It doesn’t fucking matter whose idea it was now that Nicola’s Grand Marshall of the KKK-’

‘ _Oh_ -’ Jamie makes a loud, explosive noise halfway between a triumphant bugle-call and a large ungainly cat stepping in a puddle. ‘You’re _still shagging_ the Lord of Cancer Manor. And having long, drawn-out wanks to every squirt of diarrhoea that drips out of his _baldy head_.’

This is too fucking much. This is unacceptable, Malcolm tries to say, but – no, it simply doesn’t belong here, Jamie and all the mess, Jamie and his I See Dead People ability to assess What Malcolm Is Doing, in the safe, occasionally downright pleasant, blessedly-inconsequential-even-when-racism-is-involved Realms of Bollocking Nicola. ‘Get her back here, now,’ he says tightly. 'This mess is sorted before the evening press. And you are crossing the fucking line.’

Malcolm hangs up as Jamie roars something about this being _too fucking rich_.

He’s still short of breath. He stares at the blank off-white wall above the television, where an earnest human-interest montage about the Pakistani community in Birmingham has cut away Nicola’s face. The volume is all the way up, but Malcolm’s got a strange, tinny whine in his head that blurs out the vaguely accusatory narrative.

Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.

It was easy not to think about him for the longest time and now it feels like they’re bashing skulls again and again out of mindless instinct like mountain goats in a David fucking Attenborough nature doc, only it hurts, and it makes Malcolm feel old and tired and rattled in his bones, like he’s slipping down the fucking mountain.

He throws the remote savagely. It hits a box of last year’s budget reports and shatters like it’s all of a sudden gotten violently bored of being a useless piece of made-in-China plastic. This makes Malcolm feel exactly not better, so he yells for another cup of coffee and gets up, re-tucking his shirt and pacing a few tracks behind his desk as he dials the BBC.

‘Yes, hi, Lisa – I know, I know, a complete fucking embarrassment, I know. She misspoke. Completely off the wall. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve already had words with her. Yeah. But you’ve got to realise – I mean, did you know her family hosted a refugee family last year? You’ve got to take into account her background, you know, she’s older than she looks, bless her – I know it’s not an excuse, Lisa, Jesus Christ, I know – but did you read the rest of her speech? Because she’s pretty fucking up with the times, in fact. I mean, she wouldn’t have gotten the job – no, of course, yeah – have you even read her latest initiative, last week, on meal plans for immigrant children in low-income housing? I mean, that’s fucking news. No, Lisa, I’m – no, absolutely fucking not, I’m just saying, I’m no’ looking at a very _balanced_ story here – well, I’d _fucking disagree_ , and if my memory’s as absolutely fucking exceptional as it was this time last year at the correspondents’ dinner at Number 10, you weren’t so fucking high and moral-mighty about _the Pakis_ after you’d knocked back a bit of fascist champers with the PM’s wife – that’d be a fucking well-balanced story, that’s what _I_ _mean_. Yeah – something about the new legislation. _Yeah yeah,_ oh fucking kay, alright _,_ always lovely to chat. Bye now. Bye.’

The _Mail_ :

‘Adam – hi. How’s it hanging, eh? Just calling to say – about this Nicola Murray business, yeah. Misspeaking. Absolutely. We’d love to have her do a full spread, you know, with the family. An exclusive. Yeah. Oh – next week, you know? Give the _Mirror_ and the _Sun_ a bit of time to tug each other off, and then you’re in there with the full-blown orgasm. Yeah? Great, great, great. Yep. Great to see you at the weekend, mate – speak soon.’

The Great Fuck Up Herself – he goes to the window for this one, and stands still as the phone rings:

‘Listen, Nicola, I haven’t got the fucking energy. Jamie’s drafting you a statement, which you are going to learn by heart, and if there’s any problem I will personally play fucking _Doctors_ and carve the words into the surface of that vital fucking organ with a blunt spoon. We’ve been sitting on the Peter Mannion second holiday thing, right? Listen – oh, for _fuck’s sake_ , pull yourself together. Focus on my fucking voice _._ Listen. Frankie’s been following a lead about a paid escort – tell Jamie that.’ He pauses and rubs the bridge of his nose, which is beginning to hurt. ‘Did I ask to fucking talk to him? Just – we’re going to run with that. Something about a slim twenty-something bronzed Caribbean glorified prostitute on a little frolic with the Opposition. You’re absolutely fucking fine, you little EDL Mum of the Year. You’re high and dry until you next see me, upon which you will be toppling from your fucking Deluded Nationalist Pedestal faster than Saddam Hussein with an angry mob of 9/11 revenge killers’ ropes around his neck. Sound good? Fucking brilliant.’

The sound of the TV rushes back to Malcolm as a wave when he hangs up; he blinks, and sways, and takes a few moments before letting it rush him to the Communications Office and hapless fucking Frankie. Yanking his tie straight striding down the corridor, rearranging into lean shark mode, he feels less of a home-wrecking tsunami than he’d like.

 _That’s too fucking rich_. Jamie rapping on his skull again. This can’t keep on, Malcolm finally concedes.

He’s at Frankie’s desk suddenly and has forgotten, incredibly, why he’s there; Frankie’s looking up wary through his light lashes, an implied uncertain _Aye, boss?_ , and Malcolm remembers that Nicola Murray’s been a fucking racist but the momentum’s gone, and he’s got a bad taste in his mouth.

* * *

Julius Nicholson was not one of their agreed-upon politically motivated side indiscretions. Jamie had a Rule against it, and had since approximately 1996, some two years before he drunkenly took it upon himself to relieve the unspoken sexual tension between himself and his boss by biting Malcolm’s pale neck very hard behind a skip at the Deputy PM’s birthday party.

They both had a few extras, especially early on when Jamie was less important and Malcolm had fewer reservations and they hadn’t quite settled on what the two of them were other than savagely well-suited to being in government together and having fucking spectacular sex. Jamie shagged a blonde Tory MOD bird for a good seven months, which resulted in exceptional blowjobs all around and a wealth of intelligence to stun the Opposition further into submission. They had a bet about whether or not Malcolm could pull off a one-night stand with the US ambassador (Jamie lost five hundred quid, and, much to his fury, had to borrow from Malcolm to pay his rent the next week). Occasionally Malcolm asked Jamie, his lieutenant rather than a drone, to take someone relevant and always good-looking out for a drink – Jamie swore he got off to this, wee fucking pervert, but he fucking loved the sly satisfied look Malcolm got when he proposed it, and the hungry violence with which he received the subsequent reports.

These asides happened less and less frequently.

There was always a possibility that it’d happen again – Jamie just worried about it less as they settled into something familiar over the years. _Strategic shagging_ , Malcolm called it once during a moment of rare late-night introspection and/or quiet affection, and clarified that it wasn’t fucking _sharing_ in terms so unusually and pleasingly vehement Jamie rolled over, called him a ruthless auld politico cunt, and kissed him.

It was never, ever supposed to be Julius Fucking Nicholson. But that happened, in the autumn, after months of agonising over rumours about the PM’s resignation – will he, fucking won’t he, the whole of Communications like morbid passers-by who glance up from the pavement at rooftops looking for a suicide attempt, Nutters stirring in unexpected places, Jamie coming home irritable and bloodthirsty, Malcolm greying and losing weight fast.

Malcolm didn’t ask first. He just did it, after a cocktail party, Julius drunk and smiling, Malcolm sober and intense. The next day, the PM announced his plans to step down. Jamie, whose infallible and terrifying instinct was part large canine, part voodoo shaman, and more closely attuned to Malcolm Tucker than any other living thing, knew straightaway.

This wasn’t, ultimately, the only factor in Jamie breaking several expensive pieces of Malcolm’s office with Sam hearing it all through the open door, Jamie’s attempt at equivalent political treason, or Malcolm’s shipping all of the Macdonald debris in his house not to Jamie’s own Shepherd’s Bush flat but to Jamie’s mum’s in Motherwell (a final, rather stupid fuck-you). Technically this kind of thing was still allowed, in theory. They weren’t fucking married, Malcolm reminded Jamie occasionally, and this was true, even if neither slept with anyone else in five years and four months and even Robyn Murdoch knew they came in either together or twenty minutes apart every morning, like clockwork.

But Julius Nicholson was a pretty fucking stand-out low point, given that Jamie’s Rule concerning him was a decade old when Malcolm broke it.

* * *

The night after the dust from Nicola Murray’s immigration bomb settles is the first evening Sam’s phone doesn’t ring past eleven o’clock. She’s stopped picking up for Jamie. She doesn’t need Malcolm to tell her his behaviour, objectively speaking, verges on harassment. This is true of most things Jamie does, though, and Sam’s the only other person who knows what’s wrong.

She doesn’t get to sleep ‘til late, and, once, just after midnight, checks the news to make sure nothing earth-shattering’s happened.

* * *

‘I’m sorry,’ Malcolm says.

The pub near Frankie’s closed three hours ago, and dawn’s not far off. This is Jamie’s first time in Malcolm’s house since he was more or less literally kicked onto the fucking curb. The posh Come Dine With Me living room hasn’t changed, except for the absence of filthy magazines Jamie used to like to leave on the coffee table to piss Malcolm off.

He’s sitting on the floor, shoes long since kicked off, slipped down to lean heavy against the sofa. Malcolm’s unsteady (the first time he’s been drunk in months; Jamie would be disappointed if he knew) propped up with elbows on his knees sitting forward in an armchair across the way. When they got home – back, Jamie corrects himself fuzzily – he changed into a grey jumper, which makes him look even more fucking skeletal than usual, and didn’t turn on the TV. Malcolm’s face is stretched pale with strange earnest discomfort, and there’s an old bottle of Whyte & Mackay open between them, untouched since Jamie was last here, which gives everything an odd vulnerable softness.

Jamie tips his head back against the tasteful fucking cushions and stares, mouth half-open. Malcolm watches him close and decides that he’s waiting.

‘Julius, and that.’ He shakes his head a little, once, twice, and rakes his fingers through the hair at the base of his neck. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t…’ He feels his throat catch and pauses to breathe instead of clearing it.

‘Oh…fuck off.’ Jamie’s matter-of-fact, oddly lucid. ‘Ye’d do it again. Even if - I _had_ killed him. You'd've dig up his corpse and gone full necrophiliac.’

He puts his head down and thinks about it. Jamie watches his long fingers lace over his neck, rubbing away the ache.

Probably, is the answer. Probably.

‘But it wasn’t the right timing,’ Malcolm says, after a moment, still frowning slightly at the space between his bare toes, and Jamie knows what he means, and sighs a little.

‘Okay, Malc.’

Malcolm looks up sharper than he feels, narrowing his eyes for clarification. Jamie’s face is a little harder to read than he remembers, even factoring in the whisky – he’s put on a bit of weight, which suits him, but this with his blank solemn red-cheeked childlike-old-soul-drunk-priest’s face crosses some wires in Malcolm’s head. After a moment, he dips his chin in a nod, and Malcolm has a sudden flash of what it’s like to kiss Jamie when he’s been drinking. They’re watching each other through half-closed eyes. After a little while, Jamie reaches out a hand and pulls the bottle in close to take a lazy swig.

Malcolm stands up. ‘You’ll be okay out here?’ he asks, and belatedly feels his stomach drop like he’s stumbled even though he hasn’t (he squints down, one-eyed, to check). Jamie getting the couch had been a condition of his coming back here for a Fucking Frank Talk originally, hours ago. Malcolm even brought down a knitted fucking blanket as a kind of peace offering. He twists his lips in a grimace; Jamie just smiles a little, sleepy and benevolent, nods again, and clambers with some difficulty back up onto the couch, where he curls up with a lion-yawn.

Malcolm watches him arrange himself into sleep, a process that takes all of twenty seconds with Jamie and every other dog, and stands there a few more. Then he very carefully leans down and caps the whisky bottle, picks up their glasses, shuffles over to rinse them in the sink and clack them on the sideboard, and returns to unfold the blanket and drape it over Jamie, who unexpectedly takes his wrist and brushes a thumb against Malcolm’s hand.

It’s the move of a sad puir old queen but there’s no one to see, not even Jamie, whose eyes are already closed, so before he himself knows what he’s doing, Malcolm gently pushes Jamie’s unwashed curls back from his forehead and lets his hand rest there. Jamie sighs again, a satisfied, chesty noise that’s a precursor to his particular brand of snoring.

‘You did a good thing,’ Malcolm says hoarsely, and knows his morning self will seriously contemplate ritual suicide for this distantly horrifying sentiment. ‘Bringing the wee Murray girl back. You didnae have to. That was a real fucking soldier thing to do.’

Jamie’s eyelids flutter. ‘Fucked up th’other one.’

‘Ah, well.’

After a while, he reaches up again and pushes Malcolm’s hand away (Jamie’s morning self, in turn, will think this an exceptionally noble act given that he’d been guiltily entertaining notions of seducing Malcolm during the righteously angry drive over; at present these machinations are beyond him). ‘No’ fucking there yet, are we,’ he murmurs.

‘Aye.’ Malcolm sways a step back. ‘If you’re sick on my floor, I’ll skin you an’ use that to clean it up.’

‘Tha’s an old one. Fuck off, nighty night, night.’

‘Night.’

* * *

When Malcolm wakes with a monster hangover, Jamie’s gone and the living room’s bright, the blanket folded with unfamiliar tidiness over the back of the couch.


	5. You Do His Work So Fine, He'll Remember You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've waited patiently this long as I've faffed my way through the summer, bless your heart.
> 
> There is another update coming Very Soon, but for real this time.

‘Jamie’s in a good mood, isn’t he?’

‘Sort of like a crocodile.’ Ollie’s Photoshopping a new Peter Mannion background for Terri; he has a faraway, wistful thousand-year-stare behind his computer screen, like he’s watching porn with a sentimental plot or has been shot in the head. ‘They have those perma-grins stuck on like…Halloween masks of themselves.’

‘I think he’s had his kids down for the weekend,’ Terri puts in as she bustles past.

‘He has _kids?_ ’

‘Where’ve you been, Robyn? His oldest little girl’s eleven.’

‘More like he’s shagging Malcolm again.’

Robyn’s jaw drops: she leans conspiratorially forward.

‘He’s been _shagging_ -’

‘Oh, God,’ sighs Terri, and, rounding the desk en-route to the copier: ‘Oh, God, _Olli_ e _-_ ’

* * *

Jamie has not, in fact, been shagging Malcolm again. Rather, he has indeed has his daughters down for the weekend, the first time he’s seen them in months. They went to the zoo, which despite being in London is one of Jamie’s favourite places in the world and was made about a trillion times brighter by Jen and Martha’s faces in the instant they laid eyes on baby tigers. Jamie is subsequently in a Very Good Mood.

As always, Malcolm is another matter.

After their odd half-a-bottle-each conversation, they are officially Civil, which can very well be construed as an improvement. It’s a bit of an improvement, Jamie hesitatingly concedes, but a strange, wary, lonely, deeply _English_ existence. Their relationship hasn’t been Civil since the early Nineties, and that was only for twelve minutes during the official interviewing process. It’s not a fucking mend.

Objectively speaking, it’s an improvement from wanting to open Malcolm’s guts with a blunt compass and then just fucking crying about it into pint number nine. Not that Jamie’s Very Good Mood will permit him to acknowledge these previous lapses/eight months of abject tragedy for more than an instant, and then it’s back to the DoSAC morning of trawling electronically through Ollie’s fucking hilarious dodgy online at-work purchases. _Vibrotron_ , honestly. Apparently the Opposition has the Sexual Hunger Games on tap on the lead up to the Olympics.

Nicola comes in, bleary-eyed with a Monday morning greyface that clashes horribly with her teal shoulder-padded number. Jamie keeps his feet on the desk and gives her a winning smile as she goes by.

‘Morning morning, Fearless Leader!’

‘Morning, Jamie – oh.’ She stops, puts a hand down on his desk, and tips her head back to squint painfully at the ceiling. Jamie spots the hangover with a wave of indulgent, vaguely parental pride, a bit like when Jen’s teacher rang with the news that his six-year-old daughter had put rocks in a bully’s sandwich and the wee Mean Girl had four broken teeth. ‘Sorry, I’ve completely forgotten – oh, yes – the dinner party.’

‘Dinner party?’

‘For the Fourth Sector launch. The dinner party thing? Terri’s technically organising it – well, James and I are hosting, at ours. You know?’

Jamie doesn’t fucking know, but that in itself now means a sound bollocking for Terri, which is more of a cleansing ritual than a decent considered shit. He nods and agrees to check up on the status of the invites and does he know if Malcolm’s been in yet, no, in a bit, all right, _fucking all right_ , Nicola mutters distractedly, rummaging for her make-up, and goes, bless her.

It’s even a good news day. Jamie’s fallen back into his press routine like a pig to shit – whichever Tube rag he nicked off Frankie’s coffee table last night, then _Guardian_ then _Independent_ then _Times_ then _Mail_ for a laugh break then fucking _Torygraph_ then BBC clean-up. Today it’s practically Christmas, i.e. US-presidential-visit-waffle and not a blessed fucking thing about Racist Ma Murray (of course: Jamie has not lost his touch, and he is far more fucking professional than anyone, _anyone_ else at DoSAC, but this is two weeks gone now and is therefore a bygone victory). He checks the _Newsnight_ iPlayer for the three-sentence summary, the only deviation from his Number 10 routine, as his close mental association of Paxo and Malcolm is, not that he’d ever admit it, still somewhat distracting and therefore has no place in today.

And yet. It’s a small headline halfway down the UK page – _PM’s world tour advisors yet to be announced_ – but Jamie, scrolling with the other hand halfway to his anorak draped across the desk after the still-warm sausage roll stuffed in a pocket, knows immediately what that’s all about. He does a sour tongue-click against his teeth.

There’s no picture, of course. It’s nevertheless embarrassing, and suggests Malcolm’s either been fucking careless or there’s blood in the water at Number 10 after all.

Jamie actually sees the telltale name beside Steve Fleming’s in the bottom paragraph as Malcolm blazes in at full stride, a grey suit and red tie day, the Party Killer, raking his fingers through his hair so it sticks up in a way that used to make Jamie feel quite sentimental. He clicks away from the BBC and slides his feet off his desk. Glenn says good morning across the office and gets a distracted flipped hand in response.

Malcolm gives Jamie a brisk Civil nod and pauses a good foot from his desk. ‘Where’s Nicola?’

‘Getting changed in her office.’

‘What, was it a big enough weekend to merit a Monday Walk of Shame? I thought she was off the sauce this month.’

Jamie lifts a shoulder. ‘Ah, well – that non-alcoholic beer’s like eating out your mum. Tastes the same, but you know it’s wrong.’

Malcolm twitches a small smirk before his exasperated snort, and Jamie’s suddenly disarmed. He leans back in his chair and watches Malcolm shift from foot to foot like he’s got to go but surely he can fire a better one across the bows, and it’s almost shockingly normal for a few giddy instants.

‘The girls say hello,’ he says, on a stupid impulse. Malcolm looks up, mouth half open, eyes wide; Jamie instantly regrets this fucking traitorous tact of bringing up the bairns, but finishes his thought. ‘I had them this weekend. Martha was asking what you were up to.’

Malcolm gives a tight little hoarse laugh. ‘Oh, Christ. I hope you spared her the graphic details. Tell her I’m wasting away on the beach in Malaga. Or I’ve fallen into Narnia.’

‘She’s too smart for that.’

‘I read her half those fucking books, didn’t I.’ Malcolm checks his phone, rubs his jaw with the tips of his fingers, fixes his gaze determinedly on Nicola’s office door. ‘How are they?’

‘They’re brilliant, yeah.’

‘You haven’t had them for a while.’ Quiet statement rather than a question.

‘No.’

Malcolm pauses mid-sway, tongue at the corner of his mouth, and has an odd drawn look on his narrow face. He looks like he’s trying to work out what to say – the pause doesn’t suit him. This is heading at ninety miles an hour towards a fucking _Corrie_ series finale and Jamie’s abruptly sick of it and announces he’ll go see if Nicola’s done changing out of her weekend S&M gear.

She is. Malcolm sweeps past his shoulder quick and professional and closes the door neatly without a thank you (though the door isn’t strictly necessary, as Jamie and Glenn can pick out all the details of James Murray’s _fucking PFI mass buggery all because he misses the fucking fat third-boat Etonian rowers_ just fine).

Jamie presses gamely on with the Fucking Professional Mr. Pink thing for a few hours. However, an Ian Fleming-esque text arrives as he’s leaning against the printer waiting on the last invitations for the Fourth Sector dinner party, Malcolm’s shoved with unceremonious vehemence to the bottom of the pile:

_Speak later. M_

It’s like being simultaneously divorced from and betrothed to a fucking Dimbleby. Jesus Fucking Christ.

With his innards ticking nervously far more than is strictly fucking pleasant, Jamie is forced to acknowledge that his Good Mood is flushed. This does not, fortunately, put him off verbally flaying a layer of blubber off Terri Fucking Coverley. Some levels of professionalism must be maintained even in times of personal stress.

* * *

Julius Nicholson, in typical Tucker-termed Fucking ABC (Ambiguous Baldy Cunt) fashion, has officially decided that the Wednesday night DoSAC do has the potential to be a meaningful Party event.

Sam has learned enough through Malcolm’s office door (and, if he’s honest, at his fucking knee, the closest thing since Jamie he’s had to an acolyte, not that’d he ever tarnish her with such a comparison) to understand that Julius is attempting careful, tasteful damage control for the Birmingham shuttlecrash, both deeply practical and a kind of lily-white go-lightly apology to Malcolm.

Malcolm seems satisfied with this. Malcolm is too busy hovering over plans for the PM’s world tour not to be satisfied with this. It is nevertheless Steve Fleming who’s picked to accompany Tom, and Sam who guesses with deft untried instinct that Malcolm needs a dash of whisky in his cup of tea to cope with this particular bit of news.

It suddenly feels like fate, then, seeing Jamie on her lunch break the next day as she’s sitting by Mandela in the weak sun of Parliament Square with a haloummi wrap. Her phone hasn’t gone in half an hour, an odd unhealthy silence from Malcolm, but, like she’s some kind of lodestone for Scottish psychopaths (arguably, an occupational hazard), there’s Jamie bobbing up from Millbank parting the tourists in his fuck-off anorak. He gives her an incredulous bushbaby-in-headlights stare across the street seeing her out of the office, but beams and stops traffic stepping over.

Sam briefly considers the situation – she’s clamped down hard on this inane fucking Mum instinct and come short of ringing him for the past week to make sure he’s all right, but there’ve been a few texts, civil, how’ve-you-been, okay. She takes her time folding away her lunch as a black cab driver shouts something poisonous about _fucking tourists_ at Jamie’s retreating back. Here, she supposes, the image of yesterday’s stamped-upon ham sandwich on Malcolm’s office rug floating briefly before her eyes, is an opportunity. Here is something she can actually _do_.

‘Hi, Jamie.’

‘Hiya, darlin’, what’s new?’

She straightens. ‘I’ve actually got to get back – walk with me?’

Carefully. Like Malcolm would do, if it mattered and a good shout wasn’t in the cards.

She asks how he is and gets a delighted enthusiastic account of the weekend with the kids, who, on a visit to the office a year ago, knew her as Auntie Sam and spilled fingerpaint all over a preliminary copy of the Spending Review. He’s overcompensating, moving people with shoulder-rolls like Malcolm does just with his eyes as they make their ambling way down the damp Whitehall pavement. Sam glances sideways and decides to interpret this as a kind of apology.

They pause fifty yards from the Downing Street gates; Sam puts a hand on Jamie’s arm and draws him out of the path of a righteous anti-abortion woman with a dead foetus iron-on shirt, correctly anticipating fatal collision. They lean against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s white stone and Jamie tilts his head, asking the question.

Sam glances around first – discretion, discretion, feeling suddenly quite like a spy. Satisfied Steve Fleming’s PA Gerry, a tiny Welsh monster and her natural rival, is not lurking behind the Cenotaph, she leans in.

‘Malcolm’s in trouble.’

‘Jesus Christ, Sam, it’s no’ fuckin’-’ He does the furtive glance-‘round ‘-the Horse Guards are all paid-up card-carrying Tory Mafia, come on-’

‘No one knows who I am,’ she points out coolly. ‘He makes sure of that.’

‘Why’re you telling me?’

Sam gives him an I-am-a-young-female-PA-and-know-fuck-all-and Fucking-All-you-understand-me look, with just a bit of self-indulgent scorn. Jamie has the grace to rub his nose hard and examine his/Frankie’s old scuffed shoes.

‘Aright, aright – it’s this world tour thing, yeah? I mean – look, there’s only so much I can do, they won’t let me take a shit in Number 10 anymore, an’ I cannae _do_ fucking anything if he doesn’t want-’ He yanks a hand through his wild hair, angling his back to the passers-by more out of distraction than deliberate strategy ‘-if he doesn’t want – my help, like, and Jesus, you know he’d never fucking ask, it’s like keeping one of those fuck-off massive Persian cats-’ He throws his hands wide to demonstrate ‘-you have to half-drown it in a tub to give it a bath, and then afterwards it just fucking _looks_ at you like you’ve shat on the fucking Geneva Convention-’

The fact that Jamie, a genetically-obligated dog owner if Sam’s ever met one, seems to have some unknown intimate knowledge of cats aside, this is an entirely fair assessment. Sam presses her lips together.

‘I know. _I’m_ asking for him. He’s driving himself off the rails-’ She’s suddenly furious when his expression shifts to one of polite disbelief, and hisses accordingly.

‘Really, though, Jamie, I do know him better than most, considering. _I know_ , not like you, but you haven’t been around, you haven’t seen him, and I am fucking allowed to be worried – you didn’t see him yesterday after the Steve Fleming announcement. I honestly think he’s on the verge. And people are _talking_.’

Jamie stares at her, jaw working slowly with his mouth half-open, eyes blue and serious. Sam notices his ancient grey tie’s done up too tight, and the knot’s travelling towards his left lapel.

‘People like who?’

‘Lord Nicholson, Cal Richards. The PM.’

‘What did the Pubeless Fucking Wonder say?’

Sam hesitates and has another glance over Jamie’s shoulder, waiting for a city bus to belch past. She’s suddenly aware of how long they’ve been standing there. ‘He was talking to Fleming,’ she admits. ‘After the announcement. After he spoke to Malcolm. I heard him say something about talking to the PM – _consolidating_ , was the word he used.’

‘Oh, Christ.’ Jamie rocks back, checks his phone almost mindlessly, glances sharp down the street. ‘Sam, darlin’, I _want_ -’ He throws up his hands and bounces on his heels. ‘Oh, _for_ _fuck’s_ _sake_ – I can’t.’

‘Well,’ she says lowly, stepping in close like Malcolm does when he wants something or has phasers set to Eviscerate and looking him straight in the eyes, ‘you owe me. For all this.’ Small, yet suitably melodramatic wave to the Cenotaph and the cast iron gates and the Japanese tourists. ‘And you ruined my rug. And he’s not going to _ask_ you, even if you want him to. Think of it as doing me a favour, for my peace of mind and job security, if you’re going to have such a faff otherwise.’

Jamie’s shoulders align themselves somewhere along the Prime Meridian and the rest of him goes distant, briefly, tongue poking at the inside of his cheek as he works this out and visibly comes to a Grand Design conclusion, the finer points of which she’d rather not know.

‘Fine,’ he says abruptly. ‘Listen – get back in there before he sends the SAS after you. There’s the DoSAC do tonight, I’ll have a poke around there and see what I can find out, okay? No fucking promises. Okay?’

‘No promises,’ Sam repeats with a nod. Something settles, vaguely, in her gut.

‘And Sam – if this is some Jeremy fucking Kyle thing, honestly, fuck off, we’ve talked, an’-’

In hindsight she’ll suppose it is, a little, despite herself, but now she rolls her eyes and goes, calling back over her shoulder: ‘I don’t need the details of your sex life, Jamie, just a bit of help.’ A few heads turn at this choice of words – tourists – and the Westminster types keeping the current moving around them don’t bat an eye.

* * *

Malcolm runs a good hour late for the DoSAC do. This is typical whenever Malcolm and events roundly endorsed by Julius Nicholson meet, especially when said events are south of the river. However, it doesn’t pay to be tardy today, nor does this feel like the lead-up to a good fashionably late Rhett Butler sort of entrance. As such, he speeds across Lambeth Bridge in the back of the Culture Secretary’s hijacked government car with his stomach trying to fuck his spleen.

The PM had been very clear. _I’m not fucking happy, Malcolm_ , is very clear, in the mind-crushingly screamingly fucking Boring Tom sense.

There’s never anything extra to read with him besides a terrible brooding morass beneath the surface, like Jaws on a looping Prozac comedown – it infuriates him, the lack of challenge, the lack of fucking _teeth_ even when Malcolm’s got him by the lapels and is rattling the insides of his duckbill fucking dinosaur skull. His predecessor was as charming as he was clever, and though Malcolm could and often did bully him, he’d had confidence in and abusive-parental affection for his precise, cutthroat ambition. As far as Malcolm’s concerned, the Government’s survived the last ten years and a bit on the strength of his own innate ability to flirt with this aspect of the last boss’ highly fucking complex personality. Tom barks like a half-blind old mastiff, and argues points like a sperm whale chucking its carcass on the beach after one unsatisfying slapped-out several-tonne flipperwank too many. Even Greenpeace, Malcolm is convinced, would have the sense to let the cunt die after such an exhibition.

But – he grits his teeth scrolling violently through his work inbox, the most recent subjects of which he’s had memorised since lunchtime – Fucking Boring Tom was very fucking clear, ten minutes ago.

The Lord and Master is displeased. The massive _Times_ spread on immigration included a picture of Nicola Murray at the Birmingham conference waving to glowering Tom on the next page, and this proximity has been deemed some kind of final straw. Consequences, as such, have yet to materialise from the grey swirling Pensieve of Tom’s brain, but at least he’s been fucking _clear_.

This is Malcolm’s third serious conversation with the PM in as many weeks, though the first after the fucking Herman the Fucking Hermicunt Fleming slight, and if he’s honest (which he isn’t, at least with himself), he is fucking terrified of the word _holiday_ and all it represents and yet there it just was, tossed through the door after his snarling exit en route to Nicola Murray’s Fucking Birthday Party. Third time’s the charm.

It starts to rain around Lambeth North, tap tap at his nerves. Malcolm briefly contemplates ringing Jamie, then remembers he’s likely to be there, as a DoSAC employee.

It only occurs to him that he’s thought of _Jamie_ , rather than Ollie, the usual bailout bitch, as he’s weaving through the ministerial cars on Nicola’s desperately middle class street, and by then he’s got his coat collar tipped up like a vampire Templar and the Glasgow-cold rain’s spiking away any remaining sentiment and this is just sort of a particular logical coincidence. Malcolm takes a deep breath, checks his Blackberry one last time outside the house, reminds Sam to make sure he’s in the fucking World Cup/Tour briefing tomorrow, and goes in.

It becomes immediately apparent that this is, without a doubt, the glorious DoSAC interpretation of a Gatsby party, i.e. they’ve stuck a middle-aged pot-bellied Essex pub band in the Murrays’ cleared-out dining room (currently, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, which earns them a baleful _your intestines as a noose_ suggestive look as soon as Malcolm steps in the door). Malcolm checks his watch reflexively and resolves to stay twenty minutes, or until the band starts playing fucking ‘Roxanne’.

If Malcolm didn’t know all of the drinks-swillers in the front hall, he’d immediately suspect half of this lot are James Fucking Murray’s Etonian fags and their beard-wives ushered in with cattle prods and lies about Harrods catering – but, no, there they are, a small posh gaggle crowded by the fireplace casting side glances at the band and laughing like mules. The rest are press, DoSAC and family – Jesus, Terri’s fucking mum in the corner, wheelchaired and taped to her champagne straw – but also the incongruously high-level Nicholson invitees, Number 10 people, Treasury, or MoD. Only the latter and the hacks make a point of saying hello as he glides through, kisses an already-tipsy Nicola on the cheek in full charming form, whispers in her ear that if she speaks a word to the _Guardian_ people currently laughing with or more likely at Ben Swain she should mind the laser-sights over her heart, and grins his way through the dining room to the mini-bar.

Jamie sidles up with an elephant-subtle just-passing-through air as he’s ordering a gin and tonic, which is unfortunate for everyone involved. Jamie gives him an incredulous look; Malcolm glowers; the bartender spills and has to redo the drink (Malcolm recognises a very pretty Cultural Affairs intern beneath the catering company suit – not as much of a splash-out as Nicola would like to pretend).

‘Since when do you drink tha’ _girl’s_ -’

‘Sexist cunt,’ Malcolm complains, and Jamie actually smiles, and it’s suddenly fine. ‘Fuck off.’

He slides away in such a way that Jamie follows. Malcolm tries not to notice that Jamie’s actually bought a suit that fits him (he’s mistaken – it’s a grey mod number belonging to Frankie, who is taller and narrower in the shoulders but shares the Motherwell philosophy that men do not try on their fucking clothing in the shop like women and Londoners), is wearing his familiar aftershave, and, most alarmingly, seems to have shelled out for a decent haircut for a fucking DoSAC party. He looks younger, fresh-faced and wide-eyed and eager both to smile and point the hacks towards the minibar as he trots after Malcolm away from the band and into the living room.

Bit of vivid, sudden déjà vu – baby-faced, sweat-spiked hair Jamie at the after-party of the first election, fucking horrible tan suit picked out by his wee pale wife, beaming as he spilled drink all over himself toasting Malcolm from across the room. That night, he’d seized Malcolm in a delirious hug (Malcolm remembers because it’s the first time he let Jamie do that), held on for a while, and let go to vomit apologetically all over his shoes.

He’s not drinking tonight. Again, Malcolm notices, and is slightly less unmoved than his earlier revelation.

‘I heard about the Steve Fleming thing,’ Jamie says, infuckingfuriatingly offhand. Malcolm smiles at the passing new _Independent_ columnist and shoulders Jamie, hard, into the piano. The youngest Murray son gapes from the piano bench as Jamie mutters _fuck_ , then very wisely slides off and heads for fucking Child Services at top speeds.

‘No, you didn’t,’ Malcolm informs him very quietly, resisting the urge to lean in, keeping his weight back on his heels and the abysmal fucking drink between them so no one will be tempted to glance over. ‘Whatever you think you heard, I can assure you, you didn’t, and if that needs any further fucking clarification I’d be happy to book you an appointment with someone who uses large, blunt knives to clean out OAP’s blocked ears out the back of Hackney council estates every other Tuesday. Very effective method.’

Jamie rests his tongue on his lower lip and gives him a frankly unsettling calculating look. ‘It was on the fucking Beeb, son. You were mentioned by name.’

‘I don’t think the _Mail_ heard you in the next room, perhaps you’d like to shout a bit louder? _And?_ ’

‘Well, he’s here, Fleming, and Ju’ius, an’-’

‘Was that them doing the Sonny and fucking Cher tribute act in the lounge there? I thought I heard the light late Sixties sound of domestic abuse and one fucking hit wonders.’

‘C’mon, Malc, I’m just-’

‘Oh, yeah, very sweet, very fucking thoughtful. I’m _fine_. And it’s none of your fucking business.’

Jamie dips his chin and stares at him like a baby-blue-eyed bull that’s been told it can’t bust down the fence under its ringed nose.

Ollie chooses this precise moment to roll up, purple-tied and fucking hideous. He’s got half a glass of champagne clutched in one hand and seems to have already consumed several. Malcolm is suddenly aware that he and Jamie are standing close, pressed to an angle by the piano digging into Jamie’s hip, and that he’s holding a fucking gin and tonic.

‘Alright, you two?’ he says airily, emphasis on _you two_ , like he’s got a fucking bet riding on it. ‘Not a bad turn-out, eh?’

Malcolm opens his mouth to deliver whatever the fuck’s left at the end of this fucking day, but then Jamie’s expression slides to one of sly, terrifying earnestness.

‘Is that your mum in drag doing the Brian Jones impression in the front room, Ollie? I think I’ve seen her on _The Only Way Is Essex_.’

Ollie does his brief water-swallowing routine and turns gamely to Malcolm. ‘Did you see Steve Fleming’s here? I’m surprised he could get away, with this world tour stuff.’

‘Julius Nicholson likes to dress him up in doll’s clothes and take him out if he’s been good,’ Malcolm explains. ‘It’s like one of those ventriloquist acts, but with disturbing sexual undertones. Think paedophile _Blue Peter_. It’s just not something you mention in polite company.’

‘Ollie’s very familiar with Julius’ hand up his arse,’ Jamie says helpfully, plucking the champagne glass from Ollie’s hand. ‘He wrote most of Nicola’s Birmingham speech, did you know?’

Ollie makes a vaguely desperate spluttering noise and does a small grabbing gesture close to his narrow chest as Jamie calmly finishes his drink and stands shoulders squared, chest out, daring him. ‘Jamie, come on – you prepped her the whole fucking way, that’s hardly fair-’

Malcolm smirks. ‘Now _there_ ’s a new one…’

Nicola gets up suddenly to do her speech and Ollie jumps as the Essex amps squawk to a halt in the next room. It’s Julius introducing her – he sweeps up calm and gracious and assured, and uses uncharacteristically bold language to refer to the Fourth Sectorwank, words like _purpose_ and _revolutionary_ and _drive_ that belong more to the late Nineties than now but somehow knock satisfyingly even in Julius’ whispery paper-dry murmur. Steve is nowhere to be seen. Malcolm begins to think he can get away with finishing a gin and tonic in company after all.

He sweeps away to the least offensive of the Treasury goons for a little R & fucking R. No one asks about the world tour; a few people congratulate him, mindlessly, for the press turnout, automatically assuming that he’s done the organising rather than Julius; Malcolm notices, smiles wide, and says it’s just a matter of rattling the bars in the asylum and seeing who drops their shitty nappies first.

After he’s headed off the _Guardian_ lot for Nicola, he has a glance around for her and spots Jamie instead, leaning against the drinks table in those fucking grey trousers – it takes him a moment to realise he’s actually talking to Glummy Mummy herself.  
  
Malcolm blinks, finishes his drink, and on impulse walks over to ask Nicola if she might bring Jamie over to Number 10 for their meeting tomorrow, and briefly the whole fucking horror film evening – Tom, the Essex band, Ollie Shit On His Tie Reeder – is worth it for how simple and easy it is to get that look spreading slow and warm across Jamie’s face. This, at least, is unchanged.

This is a small thing, but, goes Malcolm’s exhausted logic, so is a blip, in theory if not in politics. One can cancel out the other. Give it a week and a fucking _spin_ for good luck.

He forgets, briefly and fatally as Jamie tells Nicola the story about the fucking train and 'Roxanne' cranks into gear next door and everything briefly settles into a familiar awful rightness, that a week is a long time in politics.


End file.
